


tell me your secrets

by artsyleo



Series: comfortember 2020 [23]
Category: EastEnders (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Comfort/Angst, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Exhaustion, Fainting, Feels, Guilt, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Lies, M/M, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:20:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27690601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artsyleo/pseuds/artsyleo
Summary: comfortember prompt day 23 - exhaustionben being worried about callum and him admitting to keeping secrets bc i will never stop writing this scene
Relationships: Callum "Halfway" Highway/Ben Mitchell
Series: comfortember 2020 [23]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1995826
Comments: 16
Kudos: 65





	tell me your secrets

**Author's Note:**

> tw for fainting

The darkness of the kitchen is oppressive, suffocating but Ben doesn’t have the energy to get up and turn the light on. Shafts shine through the slats in the blinds on the windows from the streetlight outside, casting little lines of light all across the room. They break up the light, and he’s sat watching the way you can see the dust move through the air, glinting every so often. He’s waiting for a lot of things, and they all start with Callum walking through the back door. 

It’s another ten minutes before he starts to hear the footsteps, heavy footfalls on the concrete just outside. It  _ sounds _ like Callum, but he couldn’t say how he knows that. 

A minute later, the door swings open, blinds clattering against the back of it. 

“What you doing, sitting in the dark looking moody?” Callum’s voice calls out but it’s quiet, too subdued and tired. 

“I’m always moody,” he replies, and it startles a little laugh out of the other man. 

“Mind if I turn the light on, Mr Moody?” 

“Go for it,” Ben calls. The light flickers on and he blinks against it for a minute. When he looks back, Callum’s stumbled over to the counter, back to him.

“You okay?” he calls, and he hopes he’s imagining the way Callum flinches a little. 

“Hm? Oh yeah, f-fine,” Callum replies but there’s a shake in his voice, one that makes Ben think that there’s something else going on. The unspoken between them makes the air heavy, filling it up with words left unsaid just like it has been for weeks now.

“Where have you been, you’re back late?” 

“Just uh, work. My DI needed me.” 

“This late?” 

“Yeah, just had some… paperwork-”

Ben catalogues it in stages- first the way Callum’s hands go slack against the counter, losing their grip on the edge of it. Then the way his eyelids flicker, and his speech trails off mid-sentence, going from slurred to nothing. Then the way his eyes roll back, and the way Ben’s heart stops beating for a second, and his stomach drops out. He pushes forward on instinct, his arms out to catch Callum as he falls, his head just about missing the edge of the table. Dead weight drops into his arms and he stumbles with it, mostly just the shock of it, and ends up knelt on the floor with the other man’s chest across his knees, laid on his side. 

He comes back almost as quick as he’d checked out, eyelids flickering again but staying half-lidded with the exhaustion that’s apparently so bad that Callum’s just  _ passed out _ in front of him. 

“Woah, hey, hey,” Ben says, hands coming up to Callum’s face to  _ fix  _ even though he doesn’t know how, and won’t know as long as he’s in the dark about what’s really going on. “Falling for me all over again, hey?” 

The joke is cheap, an easy way of breaking the atmosphere, of hiding the fear that’s settled in his chest because this isn’t just nightmares anymore- this isn’t just something that they can brush off. It’s serious, and Ben doesn’t know how to deal with that- by the looks of things, neither does Callum. 

It forces a little smile out of the man below him, so it’s worked. Even in the state he’s in, he’s sure Callum’s clocked the joke for what it is- protection, for Ben, for his heart, for the fragile way his brain convinces him that this is the worst-case scenario playing out in front of him. It’s something he’s always done, and Callum doesn’t question it, just plays along. 

Even though nothing right now is funny. There’s nothing funny about the way Callum’s silently falling apart, the way Ben doesn’t know how to  _ fix _ . 

“Always,” Callum mutters, almost too low for Ben to catch it over the racing of his heart that’s filling up his consciousness. 

Silence settles between them for a minute, and maybe it’s the fact that this feels like coming to a head, the turning point or the end, settling into both of their chests. This feels too final, and they can both sense it- Ben doesn’t have to be a genius to know that. 

Callum pushes himself away from the floor with a shaky hand on cold tile, head swaying in a way that makes Ben’s breath hitch when he first sits up. 

“‘M fine, don’ worry,” Callum says, his other hand, shaking too hard for his words to be true, coming up to rub over his face. 

“You’re not,” Ben bites back, perhaps with too much force. The emotion in it seems to fill up the room, suffocating the both of them because it’s a truth that Callum knows but he’s not willing to admit. Ben’s left with that feeling again, sinking into the silence- the feeling of finality, and it terrifies him. In a moment of clarity, or maybe just a moment of realisation, he knows that he’s not ready for this to be over. 

Callum doesn’t reply for a while. He shifts himself around so that he’s left with his back against the counter, knees up and feet facing Ben. He’s staring at him and it feels like everything he’s feeling is too close to the surface for that so Ben turns too, backs himself into the other corner of the cabinets, and maybe there’s irony in there somewhere. This way he knows that at least Callum can’t see his eyes, can’t see the way there’s so much more than just fear and anger filling them up- there’s desperation, pleading for honesty that he doesn’t know if he deserves, among other things. 

Evidently, Callum doesn’t need to see his eyes to know him, because he speaks again after a few seconds. 

“I hate it when you worry about me.” 

“Yeah, well, I hate it too,” Ben replies, all too fast and he knows he’s on dangerous ground here, that if he’s not careful he’ll just go spilling everything and he hates feeling that out of control. 

“What, feeling worried or feeling worried  _ about me _ ?” Callum says, as if there’s a difference for Ben any more, as if Callum isn’t all he ever thinks about. 

“Both,” he says. “Neither. I don’t know, Callum.” 

“You don’t need to be, you know,” he says back after a minute, and maybe it’s the resignation in his voice, the thinly-veiled desperation like something in his head is calling  _ yes you do, please, I want you to be worried _ . Either way, Ben feels something snapping, his resolve or maybe his heart in two. 

“How can you say that?” he says, all too aware of the way his voice breaks, louder than he’d like it to be with the need for Callum to understand. “You just  _ fainted _ , Callum, because you were exhausted. How am I supposed to ignore that?” 

“I’m fine,” Callum replies, but it’s weak like he doesn’t even believe it himself. 

“Stop saying that!” Ben shouts, and he desperately doesn’t want to fight right now but maybe that’s the only way this can go. They’ve always been too good at this ever since the start- letting the anger, the frustration that makes a home in both of them bubble up and build until the only thing it can do is explode. It goes right back to  _ before _ \- back to days spent wondering when Callum would finally crack and admit everything. It’s never been good, but maybe it’s the only way out of this corner. “Just- stop saying that. You’ve been saying that for weeks and maybe you think I’m stupid, Callum, but I’m not blind. 

“I don’t-” 

“You’re falling apart,” Ben says. “And there’s nothing I can do, because you won’t  _ talk to me _ . You can’t lie to me, Callum. You can lie to yourself all you want, convince yourself that you’re okay but I know you, and I’m not just going to let you run yourself into the ground.” 

It takes a minute, but eventually he forces himself to look at Callum again after he’s been silent for a while. He’s staring almost dead ahead at him, tears tracking like deep-set riverbeds down his cheeks. It’s somewhat terrifying, because through all of what’s happened between them Ben’s never seen Callum like this. He takes a breath after a minute, shaking and rattling as it settles in his chest, and he breaks their gaze, instead looking down at his own knees. 

“I’m sorry,” he says after a minute, voice cracking and breaking. “Ben I’m- I’m so sorry, for everything I’ve put you through.” 

“You’re not getting it, Callum,” Ben sighs. “I don’t want you to apologise, I want you to talk to me. Tell me what’s going on, I’m not going to break.” 

Callum breathes deep again, like the words physically pain him. “It’s not that simple.” 

“Why?”

“Because it’s just not, Ben,” Callum sighs, his voice biting and hands coming back up to cover over his face. “You just have to know that I’m doing this for you, Ben.” 

“ _ For me? _ You keep saying that, I don’t get it, why can’t you say anything?”

“Because you’ll hate me,” Callum says as if it’s really that simple. 

“I don’t,” he starts, and it’s like tugging a secret out from the depths of his heart. “I don’t think I could ever hate you.”

It’s painful, throwing himself out there and exposing himself like this. It’s a truth, something that he’s only ever thought to himself, hidden deep in his mind because it’s almost embarrassing to admit but it’s the painful truth- that he’s so blindly in love, and that’s terrifying. 

“You can’t say that, Ben. You- you don’t know,” Callum says, desperation clear in his breaking voice and Ben looks down, eyes trained on his own knees because the words he wants to say chase around his head, waiting for him to be brave enough to say them.

Maybe he is. 

“It ain’t conditional,” he says, shaking voice and all and he hopes Callum’s still listening, because this feels so much like admitting the deepest part of him and he doesn’t think he’d be able to do it twice. “When I say I love you,  _ I love you _ . As terrifying as it is, that’s not gonna change any time soon.” 

The silence suffocates him, jumping down his throat and clawing at his lungs, weaving doubts into every thought because Callum’s not spoken anymore, and he doesn’t know how much longer he can take it. But he doesn’t have to wait, as it turns out. 

“It ain’t conditional for me either,” Callum says and it’s a trade of secrets in the dark of the kitchen. “I love you, more than I ever thought possible. And I trust you. Can I promise you tomorrow? To tell you tomorrow?"

Ben looks over to him, and their eyes connect again. There’s hope in Callum’s, and sparks of honesty, and maybe this is finality but not in the way Ben was fearing. Maybe it’s finality, in the idea that it’s the end of the two of them running in separate directions. Maybe this is finality, but it’s a beginning too. 

**Author's Note:**

> okay my apologies that ive written this like three times already but i can't stop writing it and this kinda ran away from me so like yeah i hope u enjoyed im tired heh   
> comments and kudos mean the world to me, lots of love to u   
> leo x (tumblr - artsy-highway)


End file.
